Grow the rear legs, positioning them as if they were supporting the bottle. Create the front legs and the ears in a relaxed position. Grow the tail in a vertical position, as we will detail it in this neutral pose before curling it around the bottle. From the extremities of the limbs create the fingers and claws, positioning them around the bottle (Fig.08). Remember that the Armadillo has four fingers on the front paw, and five on the rear one (Fig.09).

Fig.08

Fig.09

Press A to see the adaptive skin of the ZSpheres and then press the GoZ button in the Tool menu to export the adaptive skin to 3ds Max. We will use it as a reference to model the shell.

The Shell

In 3ds Max, start by creating a box in the Top view and make sure that it is located at the 0,0,0 coordinates (Fig.10). The box should be three segments long and two wide. Create a Standard material with 50% opacity and apply it to the box; this allows you to see the model and reference simultaneously. Apply an Edit Poly modifier and a Symmetry modifier on top. Choose the Edit Poly modifier and reposition the vertexes to create a rough shell. Delete the polygons representing the lower part of the shell (Fig.11).

Fig.10

Fig.11

Add new vertical and horizontal edge loops between the existing ones and move the vertexes to make the shell rounder. Create two new edge loops between the polygons on the central part of the shell; each edge corresponds to a band (six bands will be created as in the concept) (Fig.12). Also add edge loops to the front and rear of the shell and move the vertexes round the form.

Fig.12

Create edge loops near the edge of each band (Fig.13). Select the new vertexes at the new edges, change the Reference Coordinate System to Local and move along the Z axis to move all the vertexes outwards at the same time (after this operation you need to adjust the vertexes at the mirror plane by setting the X value to 0).

Fig.13

On a side view, select the same vertexes of the newly created edges and, with the Reference Coordinate System set to View, move the vertexes to the side in order to make the transition between bands harder. Create new edge loops at each side of each band (Fig.14).